Earlier this week minor leaguer David Wendt became the seventh Rays player to be suspended for a positive drug test since the beginning of 2012, so naturally Roger Mooney of the Tampa Tribune asked executive vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman for a comment on that high total:

Obviously we’re disappointed in the number of suspensions in our organization. We have to remember that these are young kids, and as much as you try to educate them, mistakes will happen. The important part is that they learn from them. We will tolerate guys making mistakes. We’ll talk through it again, and it’s incumbent upon them to learn from their mistakes and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

That’s about what you’d expect Friedman to say.

Rays farm director Mitch Lukevics told Mooney that lists of banned substances are posted in every minor-league clubhouse and players are educated about supplements, which makes seven players in one organization being banned for 50 games all the more startling.

Friedman should consider the case of famed neuroscientist-turned-marine biologist and famed-er whackjob-without-walls psychonaut John C. Lilly, If you had tested that guy, he would have blown the needle through the red zone and spun it back around again. Hell, you could have used it for a boat propeller.

How so, you ask. Okay, I will tell you.

Lilly took ketamine injections to help him communicate with dolphins (and subsequent computer analyses of their squeaks and chirps reveal that they thought he was an idiot), tried on several occasions to mate with dolphins – all female, we understand, so Torii Hunter needn’t be any more disconcerted than usual (and subsequent computer analyses of their squeaks and chirps reveal that they also thought he was a dangerous rapist); lived in a heavy saline solution isolation tank, apparently to disprove assertions that putting too much salt on your oatmeal will give you a coronary; and took injections of estrogen until he grew boobs (and how many games would a Razed minor leaguer be suspended for that – for violating the old unwritten mach code that clearly states “Two’s androgyny, three’s a crowd”?) But what could he do with them, you ask? Damned if I know. They sound as useless as tits on a bullshit artist. True story: the late great mythologist and literary scholar Joseph Campbell ran across Lilly at a conference at Esalen Institute in California when he was sporting his magnified mammaries and was a bit taken aback. Lilly gave a talk on the joys of hermaphrodism at the conference that left Campbell, surely no stranger to weird stories and weirder people, shaking his head. Later, Campbell met Lilly’s wife, Toni, at a cocktail reception and asked her what she thought of John’s new…um…attributes. She replied, “oh, they’re lovely – he’s so cuddly now.”

I only thought of this story because, well, because the Tropicana Dump is so close to the water.

Well, I’d assert that you were making up stuff about some fictional guy names “John C. Lilly”, but a quick google search confirms that, yes, he was for real…but only in the strict definition of the word ‘real’. A list of questions spring to mind, but of course they’re all on the variation of the theme “why in dogs name would someone DO that????” Clearly though, madness is not a brief anger (even if the reverse is sometimes true) for some people.

One question HAS been answered though: I can now see the inspiration for Tommy. One imagines that the dog & pony show in John C. Lilly’s head is not dissimilar to what happens after The Iron Giant hits a homer and Tommy is given his cue.

PS: Do NOT go see Life of Pi. While its very VERY good, and some of it involves mind altering experiences, you’ll also see a lot of meerkats. Mind you they’re treated like a snack food in parts, but there’s still a lot of them.

The way that Meerkats look at me makes my skin crawl, and the idea of eating one fills me with horror. To be looked at from within, no matter how thoroughly you chewed their eyeballs….no, I can’t.

However, most things this morning remind me of a story, and this example is no exception. You can check this one out too. Emo Phillips once said that he asked his psychiatrist “what does it mean that I eat the eyes out of chocolate bunnies and then scream “Stop staring at me!” ???

cur68 - Jan 17, 2013 at 3:11 PM

This is why Richard Parker has us humans beat: he spends exactly zero time navel gazing. He’s just looking for his next meal. The only introspection he does is think “Man, I’m hungry. Think I’ll try and eat this scrawny kid here.”

I wonder if teams test their own players for steroids, HGH, etc. I imagine it would suck to bring up a guy who hits like “MVP Candidate Melky Cabrera” only to find he really hits like the pre-2012 Melky Cabrera.

I’m sure that teams have PED clauses in their contracts, but I wonder how many teams, if any, do any actual testing, or if the player’s agreement allows them to. Especially in cases with Latin American players, or college players, how do GM’s avoid unpleasant surprises?